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Show Thumlerbirds split conference games, lose to San Diego U, It wa? a rough week for the Southern Utah State College Thundei'bird basketball team as they dropped a conference outing against Regis 82-67, cam? hack Saturday night to defeat Colorado School of Mines 95-S4 then Tuesday evening ev-ening suffered a . los at the hands cf University of San Diego 73-6S. ;The loss to Regis wasxthe mast disheartening aspect of the week end of play. The game was critical for the T-' Birds. It was their opening conference game, it was at home, and they went into he battle with a not too elustre-ous elustre-ous record. It was a gamp also that saw the Thunder-birds of Coach Jacks get off and running to a quick 9-2 lead and they maintained the lead through the early first half of play. With just over five minutes to play in the half the T-Birds held what appeared to be a comfortable lead at 34-22. That's when the roof fell in as the T-Birds wont cold in their shooting, began taking had shots and let down on defense. de-fense. Results, Regis poured in 22 points to jump out to a 10 point margin 44-34. Twenty of the points w?rp scored before the intermission and the other oth-er two were by Regis as they scored first in the second half of play. Nevertheless, the T-Birds rallied to make up that deficit and nine minutes into the ; period knotted the gamp at 55-all on a free throw by Scott Gilmore then took the lead 57-55 on a bucket by Gilmore. The two clubs see-sawed back and forth up to the final five minutes of plav when SUSC had the lead at 63-60, Regis scored six straight points before Doug Rhodus hit from outside and with just 2:29 left on the clock the visitors visi-tors from Denver held a single point lead 66-65. But that was it. The T-Birds fell apart and Regis boomed out to a commanding lead scoring 24 points in that two and one-half minutes. The only scoring for SUSC a pair of free throws by Bob Chambers. Cham-bers. Results: final score 82-67. Saturday against Mines the T-Birds and Miners took turns with the lead throughout most of the first half of play with SUSC staying in the ball game on the hot hand of Doug Rhodus. Early in the second half Mines took the lead but Chuck Anderson gave the T-Birds T-Birds the lead with 11:26 remaining re-maining in the period capitalizing capital-izing on a fast break. The lead changed hands on two more occasions but again Anderson with a bucket at the midway point put SUSC back in front 66-65 and a free throw on the three point play took "the score to 67-65. At that point a technical was called on the Miners and Rhodus dunked the charity throw, then Anderson again scored to put the T-Birds out in front to stay. Tuesay s battle was a repeat of Friday night. The T-Birds went down early but made one big surge to get back in the contest. Late in the second half Coach Jacks crew battled their way back to a 61-61 tie, but the San Diego crew spurt-pd spurt-pd again into the lead and the T-Birds collapsed as they ran away to a 73-68 victory. |